The present invention relates generally to secure socket layer connections, and more particularly to a review of certificates.
Transport Layer Security (TLS) and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols designed to provide communication security over the Internet. The term SSL often refers to different variations of TLS and SSL. SSL uses certificates and asymmetric cryptography to authenticate the counterparty and to exchange a symmetric key public or private session key. Data flowing between the parties is encrypted with a session key, which promotes data and message confidentiality. Additionally, the session key allows for message authentication codes for message integrity and as a by-product, message authentication. Several versions of the protocols are in widespread use in applications such as web browsing, electronic mail, Internet faxing, instant messaging, and voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP). A property in a SSL context is forward secrecy, so the short-term session key cannot be derived from the long-term asymmetric secret key.